The heart of the research that informs the narrative of this book comes from material archived in the William L. Shirer Collection (WLSC) in the Stewart Memorial Library at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I have read hundreds of pages in the collection, including Shirer’s letters, diary entries, cables, telegrams, and other correspondence. Shirer’s voluminous writings—in diary entries, letters, and thoughts he jotted down on scraps of paper and pocket calendars and in three memoirs he published—have allowed me, in a number of places in this book, to express what I believe were his thoughts, his moods, his hopes, and his fears at different times of his life while he lived and worked in Europe, from the summer of 1925 to December 1940.
—Steve Wick, January 2011
CHAPTER 1 THE WRITER
The account of William L. Shirer’s daily routines when he and Tess lived in Spain is from his second memoir, The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). Dozens of letters in the WLSC also speak to his day-to-day habits while in Spain.
4 “Had so much grand music”: letter from WLS’s mother, January 13, 1935, WLSC.
5 “McCormick’s a contemptible son of a bitch”: WLS, The Nightmare Years, pages 57–58. WLS’s contempt for Col. Robert McCormick appears in numerous letters in the WLSC.
5 On a warm spring day: The accounts of WLS’s graduation from Coe College in 1925, his borrowing of $100 each from his uncle Bill Shirer and from Harry Morehouse Gage, the Coe president, are told in his first memoir, 20th Century Journey: The Start: 1904–1930 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976), pages 17–29. Numerous letters in the WLSC also speak to Shirer’s leaving Iowa for France.
6 Shirer’s reading habits: WLS’s youth in Chicago, the habits instilled in him by his parents, and his father’s death at the age of forty-one are told in Twentieth Century Journey: The Start.
7 Years later, the young Shirer would remember stepping off the train: Ibid., pages 128–129. WLS gives a very good account of his early years in Cedar Rapids after his father’s death and tells how his mother fostered his early reading of newspapers and books. WLS’s barely concealed contempt for many of the citizens of Cedar Rapids and their conservative political and social views are also on display in this memoir as they are in many of the letters in the WLSC.
7 “Something in the literary ferment”: Ibid., page 108.
8 Similarly, a man living in Germany: Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York: Random House, 1998), pages 30–31.
8 Soon after enrolling at Coe College: The p rofound influence of Ethel R. Outland, a Coe journalism professor, on Shirer is told throughout his letters in the WLSC and in Twentieth Century Journey.
8 “She could not stand sloppy thinking and especially sloppy writing”: 20th Century Journey, page 208.
9 “The city editors of the Post”: letter to Shirer, not dated, but presumably 1925, WLSC.
10 “They had struck me as a romantic tribe”: 20th Century Journey, page 34.
10 “I yearned for some place”: Ibid., page 21.
11 “Morning after morning”: Ibid., pages 50–51.
CHAPTER 2 HIS LUCK HOLDS
WLS’s account of his summer in Paris, his search for a job, and the unexpected chance to stay in the city and work for a newspaper are in 20th Century Journey: The Start, 1904–1930 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976). Numerous letters in the WLSC also speak to his first few months in Paris and the beginning of his journalism career.
14 They visited the Louvre: 20th Century Journey, page 57.
14 “ … ribbons of light … ”: Ibid., page 57.
14 “I’m sorry”: Ibid., page 59.
14 Shirer took note of his journalistic shortcomings: Ibid., page 59.
15 Dear Mr. Shirer: Ibid., page 60.
15 “You’re not going to take it”: Ibid., page 61.
15 “How’s your French”: Ibid., page 61.
17 “Most of the American writers on the Left Bank”: Ibid., page 229.
17 “Hemingway did not join in the discussion”: Ibid., page 230.
18 In one of his letters to Simon: letter to Charles Simon, 1926, no month or day, WLSC.
19 In his first few months in Paris: 20th Century Journey, page 232.
19 “The rooms were rather spacious”: Ibid., page 235.
CHAPTER 3 THE AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT
22 Somewhere while he was reporting: 20th Century Journey: The Start, 1904– 1930 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976), pages 268–269.
23 When the show ended that summer: Ibid., pages 274–279. In addition, there are numerous mentions of Grant Wood in the letters archived in the WLSC.
25 Hoping to make the move from reporter … to a foreign correspondent: Ibid., pages 323–339.
28 The publisher’s mother: Ibid., page 351.
28 “Don’t fall for all those Socialists”: Ibid., page 488.
29 “This guy Shirer is as heavy as a bride’s cake”: letter from McCormick forwarded to Shirer, dated February 28, 1928. Rest of letter referring to “sentences so long … ” is handwritten on same note, WLSC.
29 Williams, who signed his letters “ww,” went so far: letter to Shirer from Wythe Williams, dated January 31, 1928, WLSC.
29 Shirer and Gunther quickly grew close: 20th Century Journey, page 438. Shirer also writes of meeting Marcel Fodor and other journalists, including Robert Best, Webb Miller, William C. Bullitt, Dorothy Thompson, and her husband, Sinclair Lewis.
30 That first winter in Vienna: 20th Century Journey, pages 491–492.
CHAPTER 4 THE LONG TRAIN HOME
WLS’s account of his journey to India and Afghanistan is in his Gandhi: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). Supplemental materials related to this period, including letters and cables, also come from the WLSC.
32 “No problem with the visa”: The Nightmare Years, page 5.
32 “Soldiers lugged in a large wobbly table”: Ibid., page 7.
33 “Each day as I waited vainly”: Ibid., page 14.
34 On December 29, the paper published an advertisement: Ibid., page 21.
34 Safely back in India, Shirer resumed … writing letters: John Shirer sent his brother the Coe College Courier, dated November 1930, which extolled Shirer’s trip to Afghanistan, WLSC.
35 After Shirer had returned to India, McCormick cabled: dated November 17, 1930, WLSC.
35 On January 9 … McCormick cabled his correspondents: dated January 9, 1931, WLSC.
35 This appealed to McCormick, who cabled Shirer to return to Vienna “via Babylon”: The Nightmare Years, page 29.
36 “She was bundled up in a heavy winter coat”: Ibid., page 40.
CHAPTER 5 HIS LUCK HOLDS AGAIN
The account of Shirer’s marriage to Tess Stiberitz, his return to India, and her trip to join him in India come from The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976).
38 Shirer bought a ticket on the Frontier Mail: Gandhi: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), pages 15–29.
38–39 At some point when she was covering the vibrant Vienna theater scene: the possible friendship between an Austrian photographer named Helene Katz and the Shirers is based on a reading of letters among Katz, the Shirers, and the Gunthers in the WLSC.
39 Conditions in her room were abominable: The Nightmare Years, p ages 43– 44.
40 The account of WLS’s firing from the Chicago Tribune upon his return to Vienna comes from Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R . McCormick (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), pages 303–309; The Nightmare Years; and from letters and correspondence in the WLSC. Smith, in his excellent book, draws a strong portrait of McCormick bullying and ultimately firing Shirer, as he did a number of his foreign correspondents, including Vincent Sheean, Henry Wales, Jay Allen, Floyd Gibbons, who had lost an eye covering World War I, and George Seldes. For a first-rate portrait of Allen, who died in 1974, see We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War by Paul Preston (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).
40 As he fell, the grip end of the ski pole: The Nightmare Years, pages 52–53.
40 On October 16, 1932, E. S. Beck … telegrammed Shirer the blunt message: A copy of the October 1932 cable from Beck to Shirer, and Shirer’s October 17, 1932, letter to McCormick, are in the WLSC. Shirer’s October 17, 1932, cable to Beck is also in the WLSC, as are his letters that same month to Sigrid Schultz and John Steele.
41 In a letter to his friend Nicholas Roosevelt: dated January 11, 1933, WLSC.
41 The same week he wrote to Roosevelt, Shirer sent off a letter to Claude R. Dawson: dated January 9, 1933, WLSC.
41 Soon after arriving in Lloret de Mar: Ibid., pages 64–65.
42 A letter to Shirer from his brother, John: dated April 19, 1933, WLSC.
42 Frederick Birchall of the New York Times: dated June 5, 1933, WLSC.
42 Harold E. Scarborough, the London correspondent: dated August 22, 1933, WLSC.
42 One letter went out to J. David Stern: undated, WLSC.
43 Other letters went out to Edwin L. James: dated December 11, 1933, WLSC.
43 “Paris has become the most expensive place”: dated April 21, 1933, WLSC.
43 “I can make Central Europe interesting”: dated January 20, 1933, WLSC.
43 “Being unemployed is no life for me”: dated August 3, 1933, WLSC.
45 “Very naturally every one is indignant”: New York Times, July 23, 1933.
45 After introducing himself to Wiegand: dated January 15, 1934, WLSC.
45 He visited with Eric Hawkins: The Nightmare Years, pages 78–79.
46 In mid-January … Shirer … wrote a long letter to Ethel Outland: dated January 19, 1934, WLSC.
47 Seated at his writing desk: The Nightmare Years, pages 79–80.
CHAPTER 6 GESTAPO AT THE TRAIN STATION
WLS’s account of his return to Paris, his work as a reporter covering the anti-government riots, and his move to Berlin to work for a Hearst wire service is told in his first published book, Berlin Diary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and in The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984).
49 Victor Klemperer: Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York: Random House, 1998), pages 54–55.
50 “With such a record of past national service”: Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), pages 281–284.
51 Even before Hitler assumed power: Oron J. Hale, The Captive Press in the Third Reich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pages 59–69.
51 That night, McDonald dined: James G. McDonald, Advocate for the Doomed: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1932–1935, ed. Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), pages 27–29.
For additional information on the foreign correspondents working in Nazi Germany, see Deborah E. Lipstadt’s very strong Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: The Free Press, 1986).
55 The next morning a letter: WLSC. Shirer’s return telegrams, dated August 12 and August 18, 1934, are also in the WLSC, as is Jay Allen’s congratulatory letter to Shirer.
CHAPTER 7 BERLIN AND THE WORLD
Accounts detailing Shirer’s arrival and early stay in Berlin and his coverage of the Nuremberg rally are from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934– 1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), and in various places in the WLSC. As for the existence of Germany’s concentration camps for enemies of the Nazis, many histories of the Third Reich show they were widely known to the public and openly discussed. The extermination centers—Belzec, Treblinka, Chelmno, and Sobibor in Poland— and what the German people knew of them remains a contentious debate among historians. This debate goes to the heart of the extermination enterprise—how and when it started, whether the order to begin it came directly from Hitler, or whether it unfolded at lower levels of his government as bureaucrats worked to please him and carry out what they believed were his wishes. Another debate goes to the question of whether the German people as a whole, driven by lethal anti-Semitism, were themselves the engines behind the extermination process—that the Nazis simply stepped out of the way and let the process run on its own citizen-generated momentum. Nothing—no physical evidence, no oral histories, no recollections of the Germans themselves, no courtroom testimony at numerous war crimes trials—has persuaded a group of kooks, conspiracy buffs, and hard-core anti-Semites of the existence of the gas chambers and the deliberate, organized murders of an estimated six million Jews by the German government. To these people, the gas chambers are not just a myth—they are a Big Lie. For a strong look at British pseudo “historian” David Irving’s methods and distortions that were exposed in a London courtroom, see Richard J. Evans’s Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (New York: Basic Books, 2001) and Deborah E. Lipstadt’s History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (New York: Echo, 2005). Additional historical information comes from Evans’ The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939 (London: Penguin Books, 2006). Ernst Hanfstaengl defected from Germany before war erupted in 1939 and eventually made his way to the United States. He died in 1975.
61 The government’s second party rally: Evans, The Third Reich in Power, pages 123–124.
CHAPTER 8 TAUENTZIENSTRASSE
The accounts and quotes of WLS’s and Tess’s lives in Berlin and their social activities with government officials come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). Additional historical information comes from Advocate for the Doomed: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, ed. Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007). General von Reichenau died in a plane crash in 1942 while returning from the Russian front.
68 In a letter, Josephine told her brother: undated, but early 1935, WLSC.
69 A letter from his mother: dated April 26, 1935, WLSC.
69 To a friend, Shirer wrote: undated, WLSC.
69 In late February, Shirer had written another friend: dated February 23, 1935, WLSC.
CHAPTER 9 THE WATERING HOLE
References to WLS in Berlin, the encounter with the lawyer, and his social life at the Taverne come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984).
75 The true oddball among them all was Martha Dodd: Shareen Blair Brysac, Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pages 136–157.
76 In mid-1935 Shirer wrote: undated, WLSC.
76 In late August, Dosch-Fleurot wrote to Hanfstaengl: dated August 26, 1935, WLSC.
79 In an undated letter addressed to “Herr Koehl”: WLSC.
79 In August he wrote a friend: dated August 20, 1935, WLSC. 79 He wrote to his friend Nicholas Roosevelt: this letter, Roosevelt’s response, and Shirer’s letter to his brother John are all August and early September 1935, WLSC.
CHAPTER 10 THE DIRTY LIAR
Accounts of WLS’s activities in Berlin and his interaction with government officials come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). WLS’s worries about being spied on are clearly evident in his letters archived in the WLSC. An example is an October 14, 1935, letter, which shows that his outgoing mail was being opened, read, and resealed with a special government stamp.
82 As historian Michael Burleigh has noted: Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich, A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), pages 294–296.
Additional information about American correspondents in Berlin and their work and dealings with government officials comes from Deborah E. Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: The Free Press, 1986). Lipstadt writes of a number of examples of how distrustful the correspondents were of the Nazis. She cites the example of Sigrid Schultz, who discovered that her housekeeper was a spy. The quote that begins “Those who today claim that the world should have recognized” is on page 146 of Lipstadt’s book.
CHAPTER 11 PARADING DOWN THE WILHELMSTRASSE
WLS’s accounts of his work as a correspondent in Germany come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). For a closer look at the work of other Berlin-based correspondents, I consulted Laurel Leff, Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and American’s Most Important Newspaper (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Leff’s excellent book takes a very close look at how American newspapers and correspondents covered the German war against the Jews. I also consulted Louis P. Lochner, What about Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942) and Deborah E. Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: The Free Press, 1986).
92 In March … he wrote to the New York office: dated March 10, 1936, WLSC.
CHAPTER 12 BAD WRITING
WLS’s accounts of seeing Lindbergh again, watching developments in Spain, and meeting Thomas Wolfe for lunch come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984).
95 He wrote letters to Mrs. Alfred A. Knopf: they were written the third week of August 1936, WLSC.
CHAPTER 13 GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY
Accounts of WLS’s work in Berlin come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984); additional material surrounding the execution of Helmut Hirsch was informed by the New York Times edition of June 5, 1937. Otto Strasser fled Germany after Hitler came to power and spent some of the war years in Canada. He returned to Germany in the 1950s. His brother Gregor was one of the victims of the June 1934 purge against Ernst Röhm and the SA.
103 In February, Seymour Berkson: dated February 26, 1937, WLSC.
103 In mid-March, Bill Hillman: dated March 16, 1937, WLSC.
104 On a small slip of paper: WLSC.
104 Later, he would write … inside a 1940 leather-bound diary: WLSC.
CHAPTER 14 DRINKS AT THE ADLON
WLS’s accounts of meeting Murrow, returning to the Nuremberg rally, and going to work for CBS come from The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984) and Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), as well as additional material from the Shirer collection.
108 A handwritten note jotted down on a scrap of paper: WLSC.
109 By the end of 1937: The Germany of that year: Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 (London: Penguin Books, 2006), pages 555–575.
109 At his home, Victor Klemperer: Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the War Years (New York: Random House, 1998), page 237.
110 Grateful to Murrow, Shirer sent him a telegram: dated September 1937, WLSC.
Walter Duranty was Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. His coverage of the Soviet famine, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, has been sharply criticized as taking the Soviet line. Shirer’s good friend Webb Miller had an extraordinary career as a journalist, riding along with General Pershing into Mexico in the hunt for Pancho Villa, covering the front in the Great War, and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. He died under mysterious circumstances on May 7, 1940, when he stepped off a train in London and supposedly hit his head.
References to Helene Katz come from the Shirer collection. WLS’s accounts of the dire situation in Austria, his daughter’s birth, and Tess’s grave health situation come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), with supplemental information provided by the WLSC. Marcel Fodor was a journalist who, along with John Gunther, interviewed Hitler’s family members for a story undertaken after Hitler came to power in Germany. For additional information, see Ken Cuthbertson’s Inside: The Biography of John Gunther (Chicago: Bonus Books, 1992). Shirer testified at the Boston federal treason trial of Robert Best, who was accused of broadcasting propaganda for the German government. A jury convicted Best; he was sentenced to federal prison, where he died in 1952.
117 On a scrap of paper years later: WLSC.
118 On another scrap of paper written years later: WLSC.
118 On another note: WLSC.
CHAPTER 16 CLEARING THE MOUNTAINS
Shirer’s account of conditions in Austria and his and Tess’s flight to Switzerland are told in Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984).
121 In his letter, T. G. Ferreby wrote: dated March 20, 1938, WLSC.
121 In a letter to a friend: dated April 19, 1938, WLSC.
122 Just before his daughter’s birth: dated January 10, 1938, WLSC.
122 While Shirer had been praised … White now wrote Shirer: dated March 16, 1938, WLSC.
122 A full month later, White wrote again: dated April 1938, WLSC.
122 Shirer explained that he had tried to line up a replacement: dated April 28, 1938, WLSC.
125 Shirer summed up the horrors … in a letter: dated June 28, 1938, WLSC.
125 Fuhrmann wrote back: dated June 21, 1938, WLSC.
CHAPTER 17 THE PHOTOGRAPHER
The remarkable letters exchanged among Helene Katz, the Shirers, and the Gunthers come from the Shirer collection. Additional research materials from archives in Austria and Israel are identified in this chapter; the names of researchers are identified in the Acknowledgments section. Katz took a portrait of John and Frances Gunther’s son, John, whom they called Johnny. He died of a brain tumor at the age of seventeen in 1947. John Gunther told of his son’s death in a book called Death Be Not Proud: A Memoir (New York: Harper, 1949). John and Frances Gunther divorced, and she died in Israel in 1964. Her personal papers are with the Jewish Women’s Archive at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The book I found the most inspiring as I tried to cobble together what little I could find on the life and fate of Helene Katz is Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931–1943, by German historian Götz Aly, translated by Ann Millin (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).
CHAPTER 18 SIGRID WAKES HIM UP
WLS’s accounts of his work in Prague and elsewhere leading up to the September 1939 German invasion of Poland come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934 –1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941); copies of his radio broadcasts are published in his “This I s Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). Where not specifically cited, the narrative has also been informed by letters, cables, and other materials from the Shirer collection.
138 As Shirer went back and forth: dated September 26, 1938, WLSC.
139 In a telegram Shirer sent to Paul White: dated September 1, 1938, WLSC.
142 In a letter to a friend in Rome: dated March 15, 1939, WLSC.
CHAPTER 19 LIES AS THICK AS GRASS
WLS’s activities come from Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934– 1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), and “This Is Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999). Philip Johnson became one of the most celebrated architects of his day, hailed at the time of his death in 2005 by the New York Times as “architecture’s restless intellect.”
149 In late September … Shirer received a letter: dated September 29, 1939, WLSC.
156 At their home near Dresden: Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York: Random House, 1998), pages 322–324.
CHAPTER 20 THE GERMANS ARE OUT OF THEIR MINDS
WLS’s accounts of the German invasion of the Low Countries and northern France, and his mood and views as he followed the army, are informed by the Shirer collection, as well as his diary entries in Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A . Knopf, 1941) and his broadcasts compiled in “This Is Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999).
CHAPTER 21 RIDING IN STAFF CARS
WLS’s accounts of the German army and the fall of France come from the Shirer collection, including copies of cables and diary entries, and Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and “This Is Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999).
CHAPTER 22 WAR OF THE WORLDS
WLS’s remarkable experiences in France, his arrival in Paris, and his witnessing of the surrender and signing of the armistice are told in Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Comp any, 1984), and “This Is Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999), with supplemental material from the Shirer collection. The encounter with Carl Flick-Steger in the hotel bar is told in a bound diary for 1950, which is in the Shirer collection. When Shirer later returned to Germany after the war, he encountered Flick-Steger again. Now he was working for the Associated Press. General Charles Huntziger signed the armistice on behalf of the French government. While he did so under protest, he apparently had no difficulty signing the notorious “Statute on Jews” in October 1940 on behalf of the Vichy regime—laws that were passed without pressure from the German occupiers. The statute stripped Jews of any rights and allowed the French to deport them to German camps. It was reported in the fall of 2010 that Marshall Pétain, France’s chief of state during the Vichy years, personally helped write this statute and toughened its original language against Jews. Approximately 76,000 Jews in France were deported by the Vichy government, and fewer than 3,000 survived. Huntziger died in an airplane crash in the fall of 1941, and Pétain died in 1951 on a French island off its Atlantic coast. Shirer refers to journalist Walter Kerr in several places in his diaries. Kerr was a well-regarded foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. He died at the age of ninety-one in 2003. (This Walter Kerr is not to be confused with Walter Francis Kerr, a famous New York theater critic.) Just how Shirer’s historic broadcast of the French signing of the armistice was broadcast live via short-wave directly to the United States is not completely known. In The Nightmare Years, Shirer writes: “The German radio engineers at the Berlin end of our military telephone line from Compiègne threw the wrong switch. Instead of steering my broadcast to a recording machine at the Reichs Rundfunk for recording, they channeled it into a shortwave transmitter at Zossen, which sent it out automatically and instantly to New York.”
CHAPTER 23 A LONG TRAIN RIDE TO TESS
WLS’s time in Berlin during the British bombings of the city are told in Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 1984), and “This Is Berlin”: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1999), with additional material mined from the Shirer archive. WLS’s close friend Ralph Barnes was killed in a plane crash in Yugoslavia in 1940.
CHAPTER 24 CROWDED BUSES
WLS’s recollections come from The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984) and Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), with supplemental information from the Shirer collection. William Joyce was hanged in London after the war. Shirer also met or knew of Americans working for the Nazis, including Fred Kaltenbach, who grew up in Waterloo, Iowa; Edward Delaney, who on German radio called himself E. D. Ward; a Philadelphia woman who called herself Constance Drexel; and Donald Day, a former correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Day was a world class anti-Semite and a self-righteous fraud who spent the postwar years trying to convince himself and the few people who would listen to him that he was a truth teller. He died on September 30, 1966. It is very difficult to believe that Donald Day and Dorothy Day, a Catholic who believed her faith compelled her to help the poor and disadvantaged, were brother and sister.
CHAPTER 25 A WARNING FROM A FRIEND
This final chapter is anchored in information from the Shirer collection, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) and The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984). The fate of the Jewish men, women, and presumably children removed from the two buses that carried Tess and her daughter to Spain is not known, nor are their names. If anyone reading this book knows of their fate, please contact me. The career of WLS’s close friend Wally Deuel was extraordinary. After war broke out, Deuel joined the Office of Strategic Services. He later joined the new Central Intelligence Agency and briefed President John F. Kennedy in the White House. Deuel’s son, Michael, was a CIA operative who was killed in Laos in 1965.
POSTSCRIPT
WLS exposes a lot of himself, professionally and personally, in the large number of letters he saved that are archived in the Shirer collection. Many of these letters written by WLS late in his life, after painful divorces from two wives, his struggles to stay afloat financially, and the extraordinary effort it took to research and write his books, reveal an aging man mired in bad, sometimes humiliating relationships and romances. Yet he saved these letters, believing, I suppose, that if he was going to save his personal papers, the only honest thing he could do was to save them all. He was not about to edit his own letters and correspondence. A large measure of joy returned to WLS when he was reunited with Linda and Eileen and when he married for a third time. This trove of letters and diaries, plus his second book of diary entries, End of a Berlin Diary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), along with his second and third memoirs, The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984) and A Native’s Return, 1945– 1988 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), are the foundation of the material found in the postscript. For additional information about Howard K. Smith’s work as a journalist in Berlin, see his Last Train from Berlin, first published in Great Britain in 1942 by the Cresset Press and in paperback by the Phoenix Press in 2000.
William L. Shirer, one of the very best American foreign correspondents of his era and a man whose life was a great adventure, died December 28, 1993, at the age of eighty-nine. There are shortcomings in every book centered on the work of an individual—what is told and what is left out. In this book, it is the lack of information about the life of Tess Shirer, who died in New York on January 25, 2008, at the age of ninety-seven. Perhaps one day a full biography will be written about the Shirers and will include her life and accomplishments, which were considerable.
Victor Klemperer and his wife, Eva, miraculously survived the Nazis and the war, and, as the war neared its conclusion, the Allied fire bombing of Dresden. He appeared after May 1945 like a man emerging from years trapped in a dark cave. His remarkable diary ends in June 1945 as he and Eva found the strength to return to their home, which had been “Aryanized” in the 1930s. The last line of his diary records, simply and sweetly: “In the late afternoon we walked up to Dolzschen.”